Tubi Tales: Screaming For Vengeance

Today's Tubi Movie theme is revenge. Mostly Korean revenge, but also some Batman, avenging his parents or something. I'd like to avenge my own parents against systemic poverty by overthrowing the government and blowing up every bank, but I've inherited their poverty and all that sounds expensive. All i can afford to do is watch Tubi and write humorously cool reviews about it. C'est la vie.

Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance

This is the first of Park Chan-Wook's "Vengeance Trilogy" of which Oldboy is the only one anybody's ever seen. I love Oldboy. Everyone loves Oldboy. It's a classic. Culturally it completely overshadows the other two films, but I can now confirm Sympathy ain't nothing to sleep on.

These movies are tied thematically, not narratively, and Sympathy goes about it's themes in a different way. Most of the action and violence happens off screen, with the viewer only seeing the set up, and then the aftermath. This makes the flick a little confusing at first because it seems like important scenes are being skipped entirely and feels a little jarring, but there's a great payoff to it. It's not till the later half where it starts showing stuff and when it does it's really impactful, because the movie had so much restraint to begin with.

It's a slow build to a single climactic moment that really makes you go holy shit. The way Mr. Vengeance goes about getting his vengeance is nowhere near the levels of gore and brutality that Oldboy is constantly throwing at you, but it feels just as shocking and hardcore because you're not prepared for it. Visually it's also just a really creative and unexpected way to kill someone that i haven't seen in a movie before, which is hard to do after 100 years of people getting killed in movies, but obviously it's something Park Chan-Wook excels at.

One of the most interesting things about Oldboy to me is how Oh Dae-su and his captor both arguably deserve their revenge against one another, it's morally complex in a way that isn't too common in the stuff Hollywood farts out over here. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance pulls off the same trick but i actually think it does it even better than Oldboy.

Instead of following the titular Mr. Vengeance the whole time, the first half of the movie is all from the perspective of the person who wrongs him. We see the desperate circumstances that lead up to a kidnapping and ransom which ultimately goes catastrophically wrong. Up until the ransom scheme goes bad, the viewer has already justified it alongside the protagonist. What ends up happening is a gut punch that makes you feel like an accomplice, so when it switches perspectives in the second half, you not only have Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, but for the other guy as well.

Mr. Vengeance pieces together the story of what happened, and by the time he catches up to the guy, he too is overcome with sympathy. He has no rage or hate for this man, but he can't just let him go either, vengeance must be had. The final scene is profound, and has really stuck with me the last few days.

This flick deserves to be talk about just as much as Oldboy, it too is a masterful exploration of the vengeance theme, while going about it in a totally different, more restrained way. So that's 2 out of 3 masterpieces in this trilogy so far. The final entry, Lady Vengeance, just so happens to also be on Tubi. So what do ya think... should i... maybe... watch it?

Lady Vengeance

Lady Vengeance goes to prison for 13 years, taking the fall for a child murder she didn't do, and patiently sets up dominoes by helping other inmates with their problems, so that by the time she's out she has a network of people who owe her one. It's a more cerebral plan than Oldboy's method of just going around beating people up, more feminine, and while fun to watch unfold, is also much harder to follow.

I'll be honest, for a lot of this movie i had no fucking idea what was going on. The plot is very cool and compelling for sure, or at least it would be if it were coherent. But of the three films in the trilogy, this is the one where Chan-Wook's subtle directing style and penchant for withholding information starts to become annoying.

Scenes transition so goddamn quickly from the present to the past, and so wildly from one location to another, that it's nearly impossible to keep up with. I cried out with exasperation "what the fuck is happening" at least 2 dozen times in the first 45 minutes alone.

This is not a film that can be watched with any distractions at all. Even trying my hardest to pay complete, focused, deliberate attention, i got left in the dust and had to rewind every 5 fucking minutes to figure out what the hell I just saw. This movie should come with free Adderall pills because you need at least two to understand it. I know because i took one and it's not enough.

That doesn't mean it's not a good film or that it doesn't kick ass, all the stylistic things i love about this guy's movies are still present, and the storytelling structure isn't all that different from his other ones, it's just a little much here. It's maybe the most Park Chan-Wook of the Park Chan-Wook movies i've seen, with his trademark dream-like pacing taken to a confounding extreme.

I'm gonna have to watch this one again sometime to fully wrap my idiot brain around the first half. But it comes together really well by the end, once it finally slows down.

Seeing that the target of her revenge had other victims, Lady Vengeance generously shares her Vengeance with others who deserve the same closure, and the entire 3rd act is an extended, very effective scene in black and white, of parents learning the truth of what happened to their kids, then taking turns ripping this fucker a new one, before finally mourning together. Like all the films in this trilogy, it sticks the landing with a conclusion that can't be forgotten.

The Housemaid

Since I'm on a Korean flick kick, there was no way in hell i wasn't gonna click on this. I see a hot Korean maid, i don't need to know what the movie's about to know I'm watching it. The fact that it was not only hot and horny, but also good, is just icing on the cake.

This is a kind of movie that used to be made a lot in the 90s but seems to have waned in the west, a good old-fashioned sex-thriller. Think something like Basic Instinct (that's the one where Sharon Stone shows her pussy) or Fatal Attraction (that's the one where the lady cooks the bunny).

This one is about a chick who gets hired as a maid by a wealthy woman whose philandering husband she immediately gets knocked up by. When she refuses to abort the baby, the dude's wife and mother-in-law hatch a scheme to do it themselves via staircases and poison. In the end, the maid gets revenge in the gnarliest way possible. I was not prepared for the insanity of this ending. It's metal as fuck.

This film has a lot to say about the attitudes of the rich toward the poor, and the thoughtless exploitation that comes with it. It's very Parasite, but 9 years before Parasite. The wealthy family regards our protagonist's pregnancy as merely a problem to make go away, either through bribery, intimidation, or violence, ever the solution for Richie Rich bitches throughout human history. They don't see the maid or her baby as real people, just as an inconvenience. The harm they do to those beneath doesn't even occur to them.

So the maid's method of revenge, which i won't spoil, is creatively appropriate. She's not just avenging her baby, but her own dignity, and does so not by returning their cruelty, but by rubbing their noses in it, scarring them all for life.

You gotta see this flick. It's smart, sexy, and depressing, with a conclusion that'll blow your damn wig off. Honestly, Korea just kicks ass at making movies. If all the names on a flick have hyphens, watch it.

Batman Vs. Robin

I've put this movie on half a dozen times and never finished it until now. It starts out hella cool but loses steam towards the end. Robin kicks the shit out of some child abductor weirdo who attaches buzzsaws to kids in cages, it's pretty hardcore. Then a Court of Owls assassin shows up, kills the creep, and fucks off. Batman assumes Robin did the murder because he's a little psycho raised by ninjas and for a while it becomes a pretty interesting character study about Bruce and Damien trying to get along as father and son. It's actually a far more interesting movie when they're out of costume and just hanging around the mansion.

I start checking out once the actual plot starts happening. I never read the original Court of Owls story, I've heard it's good, but every time these fuckers show up in something i stop caring. Batman coming up against an illuminati-like group of elites could make for a good detective story but something about them rings hollow for me. Gotham City is more compelling as a place falling apart on it's own, i don't think it needs an explanation like "this secret society has been making it shit all this time".

Batman is a product of his environment, he lost his childhood to the random chaos of desperate crime because the lower class of the city are so ignored that the trauma of poverty eventually catches up to a sheltered rich boy and his parents who never expected to see it up close. To me that's richer ground for stories and better thematically for the character because it makes Bruce a victim of the same violence that affects the poor he now lives to protect. It fundamentally connects him to the ordinary people of Gotham, which is arguably the most important aspect of the character.

Making Joe Chill a hired gun deliberately going after Thomas Wayne because of mob stuff or politics or whatever, or introducing a massive conspiracy involving secret societies and assassins overcomplicates an origin story that is already perfect, and totally misses the point. Batman doesn't need some shadowy cabal to avenge his parents against because the entire reason he's batman should be that there is nobody to get revenge on, only other victims of crime to protect.

That's just my opinion, but it's also the correct opinion. Alfred even says as much in this very movie, so what the Hell is the point of the Court of Owls then? There's a whole scene where Alfred has to tell young Bruce to quit obsessing over conspiracies because sometimes bad things just happen. It's the best scene in the movie, but then it just goes and makes Alfred wrong because the Court of Owls is in fact behind it all.

Stupid movie. Stupid stupid stupid. That's the last time i watch anything not made by Koreans.